Jin is abducted by Widmore while the Man in Black attempts to recruit Sun.

“The Package” felt like “all middle” — no beginning or end, just developments in between. But the plot thickened in all sorts of ways, and it’s becoming ever clearer that the end is definitely near.

After he is detained by LAX airport security, Jin is eventually set free. But security confiscates the $25,000 cash that he carried, and he’s forced to leave without it, frustrated and angry. Sun waits for him to be released, and when they’re together again, they leave the airport. Sun asks what the money was for, and Jin admits that he doesn’t know. Her father asked him to deliver it with the watch, but didn’t tell him why — and he knows better than to ask her father questions.

They head for their hotel to check in, and they check in separately, because — surprise! — they’re not married in this reality.

Jin later visits Sun in her room to tell her that he’s going to take the watch to his planned meeting at “the restaurant,” even though he doesn’t have the $25,000 that’s supposed to go with it. He’s late for the meeting because of the incident at the airport, but he feels he needs to at least do what he can, on her father’s behalf. Sun asks him inside her room and tries to talk him out of it, pointing out that the restaurant is closed at this time of day and no one will be there. Instead, she teases him playfully about her buttoned blouse until her actions become an overt seduction, and it becomes clear that the two of them have been carrying on a relationship with each other for a while now, even though they’re not married. This is not the uptight, temper-fueled Jin of Season 1; he’s more like the Jin we know from later seasons than we were first led to believe.

Sun and Jin engage in a night of passionate sex, and the next morning, she propositions him with a most unexpected idea: they should run away together. Jin thinks she’s joking until Sun explains that she’s created a secret bank account where she’s been hiding money away so that the two of them could escape her father’s clutches and start their own life together. Jin is taken aback, especially when he realizes that this is why she came along on his business trip to start with. He says that her idea would be dishonorable. But she counters by asking if he really loves her or not. He says that of course he does. She says good, because there’s something he should know.

Before Sun can share her secret, there’s a knock at the door. Jin hides while she answers it — though not before taking a moment to stare curiously into a mirror in her hallway — and it’s Martin Keamy, looking for Jin. He invites himself in and she gives him the watch. Omar soon joins them, and he finds Jin hiding in the bathroom. Keamy asks them for the money Jin was supposed to deliver. In Korean, Jin and Sun confer on what to do. Jin suggests paying Keamy from Sun’s secret bank account, but Keamy stops them, frustrated that they can’t talk directly to him. He asks Omar to retrieve “Danny’s friend,” Mikhail, who can speak several languages. It turns out to be the same Mikhail Bakunin that we remember from Season 3, only here he hasn’t lost one of his eyes.

Mikhail speaks Korean, and he translates, allowing Sun and Jin to explain the situation about airport security confiscating the money. Sun suggests that Keamy allow her to go to the bank, and she’ll get Keamy his money. Keamy agrees, saying that Mikhail will take Sun to the bank while he keeps an eye on Jin, and they’ll all meet up later at the restaurant. Jin asks Keamy not to tell Sun’s father that the two of them are in a relationship, and Keamy replies that their secret is safe with him — all he’s interested in is the money.

At the bank, Sun is stunned to learn that her “secret” bank account has been closed by her father, Mr. Paik, who wasn’t supposed to know it existed.

At the restaurant, Omar takes Jin into the freezer and accidentally bumps Jin’s head on the door. Keamy walks by and is displeased at Omar’s lack of consideration; he orders Omar to “go pick up the Arab guy” (Sayid), while he finishes up on Jin. Keamy apologizes for Omar’s behavior, noting that Jin can’t understand a word he’s saying. He takes the opportunity to gloat to an unknowing Jin that the $25,000 Jin was supposed to deliver was Keamy’s fee for killing Jin, at Mr. Paik’s orders. It turns out, Mr. Paik knew all about Jin’s relationship with Sun, and this entire trip was a ploy to rid his daughter of Jin, and reign Sun back in under his control. “The heart wants what the heart wants,” Keamy says, sympathizing with Jin’s inability to resist the woman he loves, regardless of the cost. Keamy apologizes again, and almost seems to regret that he’s going to kill Jin, saying that “Some people just aren’t meant to be together.” He leaves and locks Jin in the freezer.

It’s not long before Jin overhears Sayid’s confrontation with Keamy, and the ensuing struggle. When Sayid shoots Keamy and his men, Jin kicks on the freezer door in the hopes that whoever’s out there might free him. Sayid enters just as we saw before, and Jin begs him in Korean not to kill him. Sayid asks who he is, but Jin can’t answer him in English. Sayid doesn’t care enough about Jin’s predicament to do anything about it, and he starts to leave. Jin stops him by saying “free” and pointing to a case cutter on a nearby shelf. Sayid opens the cutter and places it in Jin’s bound hands. Wishing him good luck, Sayid exits, and Jin sets to work on cutting himself free.

Mikhail soon arrives with Sun, drawing his gun as he enters the kitchen to find Keamy and all of his men dead on the ground. But Keamy isn’t quite dead yet — he’s wiggling as he bleeds out. Mikhail kneels down and asks Keamy who did this, but Jin gets the drop on him, holding a gun to the back of Mikhail’s head. He orders Mikhail to drop his gun, but Mikhail, a former Russian soldier, is too well trained to give up so easily, and he spins on Jin. A struggle ensues over Jin’s gun, and as they’re fighting, several shots are fired wild. Jin gains the upper hand, grabs the gun, and shoots Mikhail in the eye (the same eye Mikhail always wore a patch over in the other reality). But after Mikhail falls to the ground dead, Sun lets out an anguished cry, and Jin turns to see that one of Mikhail’s wild shots during their struggle has hit Sun. She’s bleeding from the abdomen, and he quickly picks her up, carrying her out of the building. As they’re running out, she finally discloses her secret to him between cries of pain: “I’m pregnant.”

Someone watches MiB’s camp through night vision goggles, as MiB talks with Jin about the list of Candidate names he showed Sawyer in the cave. Claire eavesdrops on this conversation from nearby, while MiB explains that most of the names have been crossed off, and only six remain. One of them is “Kwon,” and even MiB doesn’t know if that’s a reference to Sun or to Jin. MiB claims that the only way any of his people can leave the island is if “all of the names that haven’t been crossed off go together.” Jin points out that they don’t have Sun, and MiB says that he’s working on it.

MiB goes to Sayid to ask him to keep an eye on the group while he runs an errand. Before he’s gone, Sayid stops him by saying that he can’t feel anything. He has no emotions, he doesn’t care about anyone anymore. MiB says it’s for the best, as it will help him to “get through what’s coming.”

As soon as MiB leaves, Jin gets up and prepares to leave, but Sawyer stops him. Sawyer asks where he’s going, and Jin says he’s jumping at this chance to get out of dodge while “Locke” isn’t around. He also accuses Sawyer of listening to MiB and doing exactly what he tells him to do, when Sawyer knows what MiB really is. Sawyer retorts that he’s not following anybody’s orders, that he’s just acting on a deal with Charles Widmore to get off the island. Jin says he doesn’t care, he only wants to find Sun. As they’re arguing, they’re each hit by tranquilizer darts and knocked out, and the same quickly happens to everyone in the entire camp. It’s Widmore’s people — the same ones that were watching the camp via night-vision goggles — and they’ve come to abduct one person: Jin.

Over at the beach camp, Ben asks Ilana what they’re supposed to do now that Richard has run off. She says they’re going to wait for Hurley to bring Richard back, and she knows that he will, because Jacob told her that Richard would know what to do, and Jacob has never lied to her. Sun is standing nearby and listening to the exchange, and her frustrations at being unable to find Jin boil over. She throws down what she’s working on and stomps away.

Sun retreats to her old garden — the one she planted three years ago, when Oceanic 815 first crashed. Jack follows her, and asks about her tomatoes. She tells him they’re all dead, the jungle having reclaimed the area. Jack tries to reason with her about the importance of Jacob naming them as Candidates, about how they were all brought to the island for a reason. But Sun doesn’t care, and she angrily asks Jack to just leave her alone. He leaves.

Later, Sun is visited at her garden by the Man in Black, and he tells her he found Jin. He’s here to fulfill his promise to reunite Sun with her husband. He offers to take her to him, but Sun is distrustful, pointing out that he killed the people at the Temple. MiB says the people he killed were confused, and could have avoided death if they’d simply joined him. He says he’s come to give her the same choice, and assures her that he’d never make her do anything against her will. He extends a hand to her, asking her to come with him, but just when it looks like she’s considering it because it will mean reuniting with Jin, she bolts into the jungle. She doesn’t get very far before she accidentally collides with a tree, knocking her unconscious.

Ben finds her there a while later, and learns that she’s suddenly able to speak only in Korean, though she’s able to communicate to him that it was “Locke” that did this to her.

MiB returns to his camp to find everyone still unconscious after the tranquilizer attack. He awakens Sayid, and Sayid tells him he doesn’t know who did it, or where Jin is.

Jin awakens in a very familiar place: Room 23, where Alex’s boyfriend Karl was once held captive by Ben on Hydra Island. Jin confirms this by activating a switch, which turns on the fast-paced slideshow and loud music that Karl was forced to watch and listen to while he was in the room. Jin turns it back off and Widmore’s employee Zoe enters. She explains that the Dharma Initiative used Room 23 to do experiments using subliminal messaging. Then she reminds him that he probably knows more about Dharma than she does, since he spent three years as one of them. She assures him he’s safe here, but he doesn’t trust her, and tries to leave. She stuns him from behind with a taser to force him to stay. She pulls out a grid map that she says Dharma used to map out pockets of electromagnetism under the island, and she notes that these old documents were signed by “Jin Soo-Kwon.” She asks for his help with deciphering the map, but Jin counters by demanding to speak to her boss — whom he knows is Charles Widmore. Zoe says that Jin’s in luck, because Widmore wants to talk to him, too.

At MiB’s camp, he gives Sayid a pistol and tells him to wrap it in plastic so it won’t get wet when he has to swim, as part of his mission. Nearby, Claire is watching MiB warily, and he asks her what’s wrong. She sulks over to him and says she heard what he told Jin about being a Candidate, and how MiB needs all of the Candidates to get off the island. She asks if her name was on the wall, too. He says no, and she nearly freaks out, saying that MiB doesn’t need her at all, that it doesn’t matter whether she gets on the plane or not. MiB calms her by reassuring her that he does need her, and that there’s plenty of room on the plane for everyone. This seems to appease her, but she glances at Kate, who’s sitting alone in the distance, and her resentment toward Aaron’s surrogate mother stirs again. She points out that when she gets home, her son won’t even know her. He still thinks Kate is his mother. Claire asks if Kate’s name is on the wall, and MiB says “not anymore,” but he says that he needs Kate, too. He needs her to help convince the other three remaining Candidates (Jack, Hurley, and Sun) to leave the island with them. He then pointedly suggests that after Kate’s helped him do this, her help will no longer be needed. The statement leaves Claire’s twisted mind spinning with possibilities.

Sawyer asks MiB and Sayid where they’re going. MiB replies that they’re taking the outrigger canoe to Hydra Island, to get Jin back. Sawyer asks the obvious question: what does MiB need with a boat? Why can’t he turn into black smoke and fly over the water? MiB says he can’t do that, or he would have done it to escape from the island long ago.

Ben brings Sun back to the beach, and Jack checks her injury. Ben tries explaining to Ilana that he found her this way, and had nothing to do with Sun getting hurt, but Ilana is skeptical about Ben’s lack of involvement. Jack diagnoses Sun with a mild concussion, and something called Aphasia, which affects the language center of her brain. She can understand everyone else’s English, but she can only reply in her native Korean. Jack says that the condition is usually temporary, and tells Sun that she’ll be fine. Richard and Hurley return just then, and Richard, his sense of purpose restored, tells everyone to pack up camp because they’re leaving.

MiB lands the canoe on Hydra Island and takes note of the sonic pylons that Widmore’s people have deployed as a perimeter defense. He’s only taken a few steps when shots are fired at the ground near his feet, and Widmore’s men appear from behind the trees and tell him to put his hands up. They guide him along the shoreline — from behind the pylons — to an area near the Ajira plane, where Charles Widmore is waiting. Widmore asks MiB if he knows who he is, and MiB replies that he’s Charles Widmore, and asks if Widmore knows who he is. Widmore replies, “Obviously, you’re not John Locke. Everything else I know is a combination of myth, ghost stories, and jungle noises in the night.” MiB says Widmore must know a lot more than that, judging by the sonic pylons he’s using to keep MiB out. Widmore asks MiB what he wants, and MiB says he wants Jin. Widmore lies, saying he has no idea what MiB’s talking about. MiB sizes Widmore and his men up, and replies, “A wise man once said that war is coming to this island,” referring to a statement Widmore himself made to Locke in Season 5. “I think it just got here.”

Back at the beach camp, Jack asks Richard where they’re going. Richard asks where Locke is, and Ben says MiB said he’d be on Hydra Island. Richard figures out that MiB plans to leave the island on the Ajira airplane, so he answers Jack’s question by saying that they’re going to Hydra Island to stop MiB from leaving. Ilana asks how they’re supposed to keep MiB from leaving, and Richard says they’ll have to destroy the plane. But Sun is outraged that Richard wants to destroy their only way off the island. She launches into a vicious tirade against Richard, but since can only speak Korean, he has no idea what she’s saying. She says she’s only interested in finding Jin, not saving the world. Since she and Jin are important to Jacob’s cause, she tells Richard that he won’t have her help when he needs it, because she only wants to take her husband and leave on the plane. She storms off, leaving Richard and everyone else in a stunned silence, wondering what she said, yet understanding her emotional response to Richard’s plan.

Widmore returns to the Hydra station and berates Zoe for her methods of abducting Jin — actions that drew MiB straight to them, when they weren’t expecting MiB to come to Hydra Island for several more days. Zoe argues that she panicked because Jin was about to leave MiB’s camp, and she feared they were losing their chance to grab him. Widmore says that she should have let Jin leave, and then abducted him in the jungle. Zoe counters that Widmore should have put a mercenary in charge instead of a geophysicist (her). Jin overhears them, and they realize he’s watching. Widmore quickly regroups and tells Zoe that what’s done is done. He asks her to go get “the package” from the submarine and take it to the Infirmary for him.

Widmore then turns to Jin and apologizes for how he’s been treated. Jin demands to know why Widmore brought him here. Widmore says his people searched the Ajira plane and found something in the luggage that Jin will want to see. It’s a digital camera, and it holds images of Ji Yeon, Jin’s beautiful little girl. As he thumbs through the photos of the daughter he’s never seen before, Jin is unable to hold back his tears. Widmore says he knows what it’s like to have a daughter and be kept apart from her. He also knows that all Jin wants is to be reunited with his wife and daughter, but Widmore warns him that their reunion would be short-lived “if that thing masquerading as John Locke ever got off this island.” Everyone in the world “would simply cease to be” if the monster escapes, and Widmore claims to have come to make sure that doesn’t happen. Jin asks Widmore how he plans to stop MiB, and Widmore asks Jin to come with him to see “the package.” Jin asks what this package is. “It’s not a what,” Widmore replies. “It’s a who.”

At night, Sun sits alone by a fire, staring at the waves. Jack visits her and brings some gifts along. He explains that her condition reminded him of a patient he had during his residency who also suffered from Aphasia. The man couldn’t talk, but a nurse suggested that not speaking was not the same as not writing, and they were able to communicate with the man via having him write out words. Jack offers a pen and paper to Sun and asks her to give it a try. She writes out “yes,” and Jack’s pleased that it’s working. Jack tells her he went back out to her garden to see if “Locke” was there, but instead of Locke, he found something else. He produces a juicy, red tomato, and offers it to her, saying, “I guess no one told it it was supposed to die.” Jin writes “Sorry” on her pad, and Jack tells her not to worry about her earlier behavior. He asks what MiB told her, and she writes back that MiB claimed to have Jin. Jack asks why she didn’t go with him, and Sun says she doesn’t trust “Locke.” Jack asks if she trusts him, and she nods. He asks her to come with him, and he won’t try to get her to stay and fulfill Jacob’s plan anymore; instead, he promises to help her find Jin, and then put them both on the plane and get them off the island. It’s the same promise MiB made, but Jack is more believable, and when he extends his hand, she accepts it.

At MiB’s camp, Kate and Sawyer talk about MiB’s chances against Widmore. Sawyer hopes that Widmore “blew him right out of the water,” and shares his belief that this whole thing is almost over. MiB returns just then — much to Sawyer’s chagrin — and Kate notes that he’s alone. Sawyer confronts him, asking about Jin. MiB says that Widmore claimed not to have Jin, though he doesn’t believe him. Sawyer asks where Sayid is, and MiB brings up the locked, guarded room that Sawyer saw on the submarine, and says simply, “I don’t like secrets.”

At the Hydra Island dock, Sayid emerges from the water near the submarine to watch as a man is dragged off the sub, barely conscious. This is “the package” Widmore referred to earlier that was being kept in the padlocked room. As Zoe and her friend struggle to carry their prisoner, they stumble on the deck, and the man lands face-down on the edge of the peer, coming face-to-face with Sayid.

It’s Desmond!

Kate’s name was on the cave wall, but it was already crossed out. For reasons unknown, she was once a candidate, but is no longer.Why was Kate’s name not seen as one of the Candidates written in the cave? Is she not a Candidate? Or is she there, but we just didn’t see her? [6.04]

Keamy was hired by Sun’s father to kill Jin, after he found out about their affair.
Sideways Reality:Why was Jin being held captive by Martin Keamy? [6.06]

Desmond Hume.What’s inside the padlocked door on the sub? [6.08]

It would appear that Eloise somehow knew that Desmond had a role yet to play in the war coming to the island.What did Eloise mean when she said the island “isn’t yet finished” with Desmond? [5.06]

If Charles Widmore knows about the Man in Black and his imprisonment on the island by Jacob, then it stands to reason that his former lover Eloise Hawking knows as well. Following this line of reasoning, Eloise had to send her son to the island to die, to ensure that events would play out as they were meant to, because the alternative would mean the island’s destruction, and the smoke monster being set loose to kill everyone on earth. She sent Daniel to die, to save the world.Why would Eloise Hawking send her son to the island, knowing that he would die at her own hands? What could be so vitally important to the fate the island that Eloise would sacrifice her own son to see it done? [5.14]

Sideways reality: Why aren’t Sun and Jin married?

Kate was once a Candidate, like so many others. Why was her name crossed out? Why isn’t she a Candidate anymore?

Why is Widmore searching for the electromagnetic pockets of energy under the island?

Why did Widmore bring Desmond back to the island? What does he plan to do with Desmond?

Looks like Sideways Sun really doesn’t speak English after all.

Kind of a clever “full circle” thing, I suppose, that Sun is now the one on the island who can’t speak English. If and when the two of them ever reunite, will Jin have to translate for her?

Also interesting that Sun losing the ability to speak English happened just as we learned that her Sideways counterpart couldn’t speak English, either. Connection?

The tranquilizer dart attack by Widmore’s people reminded me of how Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sawyer were knocked out in the Season 2 finale, “Live Together, Die Alone.” Granted, Widmore’s people used more high-tech means of shooting their darts, but it achieved the same effect. It left me wondering if we’re meant to read this similarity as an intentional similarity — one that might christen Widmore’s people “the new Others.”

It’s nice that Jack’s got his mojo back. Ironically, in his rational, self-assured way, he’s sounding more and more like the old Locke — telling his friends about how they were brought to the island by Jacob for a reason, and how it’s a very important reason. The difference is, Jack is a lot more convincing, because he’s more comfortable in his own skin now than Locke ever was. Jack has become a firm believer in Jacob and his cause, and it’s a remarkable — and gratifying — transformation. Jack is now the island’s man of faith, and the role fits him like a glove.

MiB is a master manipulator. Or at least, he fancies himself as one. He appears as a genial father figure, wearing John Locke’s friendly, down-home demeanor, but he’s working every single person as a means to an end. And now, the cracks are starting to show, because he’s feeding different lies to different people. He needs all of the Candidates dead, in order to leave the island (remember that in his original form, he vowed to kill Jacob and whoever replaced Jacob). This is because as long as the island’s “protector” is alive, he can’t leave, and one of them is going to be that protector. So he’s pulling all of their strings in a master plan to escape from his island prison. Observe:

He’s promised Sawyer the chance to leave the island behind, along with all of the pain and misery it’s caused him.

He reached out to Kate with a heart-tugging story about the abuse he suffered at the hands of a crazy mother, as a way of building a bridge between the two of them. But he told Claire in this ep that he only needed Kate around to help convince the remaining Candidates to join his team. After that, he all but said that Claire can do whatever she wants to, to Kate.

Likewise, he told Kate that Claire is insane, insinuating that little Aaron will still need Kate when they all leave the island. He’s working both women against each other to suit his own plan.

He promised to reunite Jin with Sun, and vice versa, though neither one of them believed or trusted him. His purpose here is obvious: get them together and eliminate them both, since he doesn’t know which is the Candidate.

He’s poisoned Sayid with this infection, and made the impossible promise of reuniting Sayid with his dead wife Nadia.

It couldn’t be more obvious that the Man in Black is telling the Candidates whatever they want to hear. He’ll promise them the moon if it means getting off the island. I think his plan is probably to get them all together in a single location, and kill them all at once — perhaps with Crazy Claire’s help, since “the rules” keep MiB from harming them himself. He wants to gather them this way because if he took them out one at a time, the ones still alive would surely turn on him, and he’d lose his perceived advantage.

The debate is over. Jacob is good, MiB is evil. Deal with it.

Here’s a question: is one of the Candidates going to become Jacob’s replacement? Or are they already Jacob’s replacement, they just don’t know it yet? An argument could be made that the latter is true, since MiB is intent on killing all six (er, seven) of them in his bid to escape. (Yeah, I know he’s claiming to want them all on his side, so they can leave together. And if the Candidates weren’t on the island anymore, it would have the same effect — MiB would be able to escape. But I think his vow to Jacob to kill Jacob’s replacement still holds.) I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we come to find out that one of the Candidates (I’m looking at you, Jack) is already unknowingly taking Jacob’s place, and has been since Jacob was killed.

This is the first time I ever noticed that “Paik” is pronounced “peck.”

It was cool that Room 23 got revisited, and further explained. I think we had enough pieces of the puzzle to reason out for ourselves that Dharma was doing subliminal message experiments there — and hence, Ben was using it to try to program Karl not to love his daughter Alex anymore — but I appreciate the writers connecting those dots for us more definitively.

Best line: Sawyer’s “No, because that would be ridiculous.”

The scene between MiB and Widmore was pretty delicious. There’s something about elder, seasoned actors, that can chew scenery like nobody’s business, and can say more with a single glance than younger actors can communicate with pages of words. Their confrontation smartly referred back to Widmore’s last meeting with John Locke, when he insisted that war was coming to the island, and the wrong side would win if Locke wasn’t returned to it in time. I don’t believe Widmore knew then that Locke was going to die — I suspect that his intentions were more or less honorable. He was trying to get all of the 6 remaining Candidates back to the island where they belonged. Don’t get me wrong — Widmore’s hardly the good guy in this story. I’m sure he’s still planning to possess the island in the end, for his own power-hungry desires. But for now, he and Jack’s group share a common enemy, and that makes them temporary allies. The scene also left me wondering just how much Widmore does know about the Man in Black/smoke monster — and more importantly, how he knows it. Being the leader of the Others (as Widmore once was) doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re given all of the answers. Just look at Ben. He was clueless about the true nature of the island, and the conflict between Jacob and MiB. Although… I do think Eloise Hawking knew about MiB, and the threat he poses to the world at large, because she kept insinuating to Desmond at the jewelry store, and later to Ben at the church, that everyone on the planet would die if anything happened to the island. So how did Widmore and Eloise come to know these deeper secrets of the island, and why weren’t those same secrets shared with Ben when he rose to power?

I kept hoping to find out that Sideways Sun had already shed her father’s influence and put him under her thumb, just as the Sun we know did when she bought control of his company from him. Oh well. Maybe that’s yet to come.

I also really believed that, this being a Sun/Jin episode, “The Package” would finally give us their long-awaited reunion. Looks like that’s still in play, but it’s starting to feel like the writers are really dragging it out. At this point, after so much build-up, it has to be an emotional explosion when it happens, leaving us all in joyously-sobbing states of blubbery glee. Otherwise, it won’t be able to help feeling anticlimactic.

Sideways Keamy’s statement that “some people just aren’t meant to be together” is a statement and sentiment we’ve heard repeated on the show many times before. It almost seems like no relationship is going to survive this show. Most recently, Juliet said those words to Sawyer, repeating what was said to her as a child by her divorcing parents. Sideways Sayid pushed Nadia away, believing they weren’t supposed to be together because he wasn’t good for her. Original Sayid previously lost both Shannon and Nadia, who were each killed while he was involved with them. Likewise, Hurley and Libby were torn apart when she was killed. Jack and Kate seemed headed for a happily ever after when Jack’s drug addiction tore them asunder. There’s also Charlie and Claire. Richard and Isabella. Daniel and Charlotte. And things aren’t looking too good at the moment for Desmond and Penny. Is every romance on Lost doomed to end badly?

For the record, I don’t for one second believe that Sideways Sun won’t survive her gunshot wound. The baby may not make it, but Sun will live.

I kept debating what the reason was that MiB really took Sayid along on his supposed rescue mission. He claimed it was to help him get Jin back, but I don’t imagine that this numb version of Sayid really cares about helping any of his friends (after all, he watched in detached silence as Claire tried to kill Kate, just a few episodes ago). So by the end, I figured that MiB must’ve sent him to find out what was in the padlocked room on the sub. And MiB confirmed that that was why he took Sayid with him. But don’t forget that Sayid believes Charles Widmore is the man who took Nadia from him — the man who had her killed by that seemingly-random hit-and-run car accident in L.A. Sayid may have agreed to track down Widmore’s secret weapon for MiB… but I wonder if he might actually there on a self-appointed mission to get retribution on the man he holds responsible for his wife’s death.

Sideways Sayid’s “rescue” of Jin was not what I expected. He kind of carelessly offered Jin the case cutter and wished him luck. I understand Sayid’s desire to get out of the restaurant before anyone could connect him to the four murdered people inside… but come on, Sayid. You disappoint me. I was imagining a “Sayid-and-Jin-buddy-cop” scenario, where Sayid would join up with Jin and help rescue Sun. Hmph. Are the writers trying to make Sayid less likeable this season — in both realities? Are they setting us up to not be terribly heartbroken if he gets killed off?

It was pretty nifty that Jin got to take Mikhail down a second time. You may recall that Jin went all kung-fu on Mikhail on the island, back in Season 3. Mikhail survived the encounter, but the same can’t be said for him in this episode. Guess we’ll never find out what happened to his eye in the original reality.

By now you’ve probably noticed that every Sideways character has a beat where they see themselves in a mirror — and nearly do a double-take, as if seeing something there that gives them pause. Sun’s mirror moment was when she threw on her robe, right before opening the door to greet Martin Keamy. So what’s happening in these “mirror moments”? Are the castaways getting a sense of the other life that they once led, in another timeline/reality?

Raise your hand if you saw it coming that “the package” = Desmond. The real question now is, what does bringing Desmond to the island get Widmore? This is what I want to focus my big theory on this week.

To refresh your memory, we last left both Widmore and Desmond in Los Angeles, where Desmond had been taken by ambulance to a local hospital, following his run-in with Benjamin Linus, who was there to kill Penny but backed down at the last second. Desmond fended him off, but got shot for his trouble. Penny and little Charlie were met in the hospital waiting room by Eloise Hawking, who offered her sympathies for what had happened to Desmond. Later, after Desmond got out of surgery, he reunited with Penny and informed her that he would be fine, and promised once again never to leave her. Outside, as Eloise was leaving, she ran into her old lover, Charles Widmore. They spoke briefly of their dead son, Daniel Faraday, before Eloise slapped Widmore in anger and left him there.

So in the interim, it looks like Widmore went inside the hospital, grabbed Desmond, and locked Des in his submarine, planning to take him to the island. Presumably, Penny and Charlie were left behind to grieve his absence, though for all we know, Widmore may have brought them along for the ride as well. It seems unlikely though, as Widmore’s always shown a reluctance to put Penny in any kind of danger, and danger is exactly what they were headed for on that sub.

Which brings us back to the here and now. Widmore obviously believes that having Desmond gives him some sort of advantage over the Man in Black, but what might advantage that be…?

Daniel Faraday once told Desmond that he was “uniquely and miraculously special,” and I always wondered if that statement might come back into play again someday. I assumed at the time that it meant that Desmond was the one person alive capable of violating the rule that “history cannot be changed.” In other words, he’s the one person able to alter history. This is due to whatever happened to him when he was at ground zero when the Swan hatch imploded. It shifted his consciousness through time, and we were lead to believe it gave him some unique properties or abilities, such as his foreknowledge of Charlie Pace’s death. The show has never explained any of this, so it looks like next week, we may finally some answers. (And yay to the show’s writers for not forgetting about this stuff, and finding a way to bring it all together in the end. Maybe we’ll even, at long last, find out what really happened when the Hatch imploded and the sky turned purple and all that.)

It also grabbed my attention (as I’m sure it did some of you) that Widmore is actively searching for pockets of electromagnetic energy beneath the island. He’s even brought a geophysicist (Zoe) along to help him find them. We don’t know why he’s looking for these pockets, but we know someone who survived an implosion right on top of one: Desmond.

So here’s my theory. Widmore has brought Desmond to the island with the intention of using him to manipulate one of these pockets of electromagnetic energy. The combination of Desmond and an energy pocket will be used as some sort of weapon against the Man in Black/smoke monster, perhaps ensnaring him and preventing him from ever leaving the island. Or maybe his sights are set higher, and he means to destroy the monster.

Side note: I also wonder if Desmond’s ability to be unaffected by changes to the timeline could mean that he’s able to see into the Sideways reality. If so, then the next episode might mark the start of explaining how the two realities are connected.

“The Package” might have been all middle, storytelling-wise, but I’m beginning to sense the earliest hints of every last piece of this giant jigsaw puzzle starting to come together, like pieces on a chess board assembled via an incredibly intricate plan that took years to put in place.

Mark my words: the writers have us right where they want us. And when the finale arrives…

13 Responses

Two things:
1) Did Kearny say something to Jin when he was taping him up about him finding out “what happened to the island”? I could have SWORN that’s what he said!!

2) The scene with Jack and Sun on the beach – I think you missed the clear Jacob references – “Do you trust me?” and then the camera zoomed in on him offering his hand – just like Jacob did when he visited everyone off the island!

I cannot believe that you didn’t mention that in this episode, in the Sideways reality, THERE IS ONLY ONE KWON!!! I can’t imagine the writer’s didn’t put this in there as a specific yet veiled answer to the question, “Which one is the Candidate?”

On Widmore: “I’m sure he’s still planning to possess the island in the end, for his own power-hungry desires. ”

I’ve been pondering Widmore this whole season. I may be wrong here, but hasn’t the majority of our understanding of C.W. been informed by Ben? Ben is the one who has said that he wants to “take over the island” and use it to “exploit it for his own monetary benefits.” We’ve gotten some info from Penny, in saying her father is a powerful/bad/unstoppable man. But most of the idea we have of CW is from Ben, who now we know doesn’t even understand what’s truly going on on the island after all!
Anyways, here’s my theory:
CW is not actually bad. Think of what he said to Sawyer, “it’s sad that you think that’s what’s really going on” or whatever after Sawyer told him who he perceived him to really be. And he’s said to the real John Locke off-island that Ben gave everyone a bad flavor about him. Maybe he’s kept his distance from Penny because he knows this “war” is coming, and he had to put his whole life into stopping MiB, and refused to put her in danger, so he’s had to be cold and forfeit a relationship with her. But really he loves her and wants to save her, and everyone else for that matter!
All that to say, I don’t know if CW is really bad, because we really only got that info from Ben, which we know is tainted by their history and at this point not even necessarily reliable.

Loneranger, wow I didn’t even think about that and no where else I’ve read has anyone picked up on that. Nice catch!

I’ve had similar thoughts as you Megan with Widmore. Ben has been known to tell a lie or two when trying to get his way so it’s possible Widmore is more good then we think. While being the leader of the others we don’t know of him doing anything to put the island in danger or such.

Has everyone forgotten about a certain freighter that Widmore sent to the island? Sure, he did it to take Ben out of the equation, but he hired mercenaries to do it and gave them orders to abduct Ben by any means necessary — even if it meant killing anyone else on the island who got in their way. I don’t think Alex, Karl, Danielle, or any other survivors caught in Keamy’s crosshairs would have warm, fuzzy feelings towards Widmore.

And what about that fake Oceanic 815 full of dead bodies that he buried at the bottom of the ocean? At the very least, he engaged in some grave-robbing to get his hands on that many bodies.

Yes, most of our info about him comes from Ben, who had a rivalry with him and had every reason to lie about the man. But look at Widmore’s actions. Think about how he held back Desmond’s letters to Penny while Des was in prison, and the many great lengths he went to, to try and keep them apart. There’s “overprotective father” and then there’s “egomaniacal.”

I’m not saying he’s the ultimate evil, but he’s hardly a bright, shining hero. Just like everyone else on the show, Widmore consists of multiple shades of grey. I find his shades to be darker than most.

I’m also very intrigued by what Keamy says to Jin in the freezer. He was somewhat compassionate when Omar accidently rammed Jin’s head into the door, but don’t worry, he’s the same old Keamy. When he is tying up Jin I also thought I heard “island,” but that is not the case. I rewatched it on DV-R a few times, but had to close caption it to figure out exactly what he was saying based on his accent or whatnot.

“I’m gonna strap you here”
“Just in case you figure out what’s about to happen TO YOU”
“I can’t have you freaking out”

Also, I think we can safely assume Jin Kwon is the candidate, and he is going to be required to sacrifice something just like everyone else to stay on team Jacob. In his case, the chance for Sun and his daughter to live happily ever after, albeit without him ever being able to see them again.

Some random observations (reserving the right to be wrong on any of this.)
1) the Book of Rules on the table when Richard tests young Locke has never reappeared
2) Desmond was also told “the rules don’t apply to you”
3) For what it’s worth, Faraday’s white rat in 1996 was named “Eloise”
4) Time on the island goes much faster (or at variable rates) compared to away from the island a) the clock in the test rocket fired from freighter to Faraday and
b) When the helicopter took Sayid and Desmond (?) back to the freighter, the islanders (Juliet) asked, “its been almost a day, it should have taken about 15 minutes.” Faraday tries to explain, Charlotte stops him, “it would only confuse them” then Juliet “well, if you talk real slow, maybe we can….”
5) Faraday may have been able to give Eloise information about the future. He got thrown out of Oxford for using his time travel thing on some young woman, and she ended up brain scrambled for the rest of her life, supported by Widmore. Faraday says, “I would never have done it without testing it on myself first.” Years later he also suffers from trans-temporal dementia, though not quite as severe.
6) A TRUE PARADOX (hoping for a real physicists answer. Type real slow.)
In 1996 Faraday sent Eloise’s (the white rat’s) conciousness forward in time for a while (settings 2.342 at 11Hz) then it became present again and ran the maze quickly. Faraday was excited because he was not going to teach the rat the maze until later in the day. If the rat had lived, and was taught the maze later that day, then all would of course make perfect sense. But the rat croaked right after running the maze. When did it get taught? Ressurected for a few hours training?
Perhaps this is what (Lindeloff?) was referring to when he posed “what would happen in one timeline if you died in the other,” not meaning branched universes but a portion of one universe folded back over itself, as the sideways would seem to be.

7) Sayid watched in detached silence as Claire tried to kill Kate. This is unusual, showing a great lack of affect. Most anyone else would have experienced and even expressed some degree of joy.

Ok, someone help clarify something for me … I got a phone call during some of the Jin/Widmore interaction and missed a little bit of it … So is Jin’s connection with the map from when he worked with the Dharma Initiative back in the 70s flashback era?

Does anyone else find it weird that the MiB “disease” has differing effects on people … e.g. making Claire emotional and erratic, and making Sayid emotionless and detached? It’s almost like they’re in different stages of grief/acceptance.

Good points Robin, I kind of forgot about all the great lengths Widmore went to outside of the freighter of mercenaries. We also don’t know how he got Desmond to the island or exactly what he plans to do with him. Of course maybe Widmore has known what Desmond is “capable of” this whole time and that’s why he’s kept him away from Penny, knowing it would only bring her hurt in the end.

I keep thinking about Sun not having the last name Kwon in the sideways reality. With this it would mean she is not a candidate and Jin is. I think this also would explain why she didn’t travel back to the 70’s on the Ajira flight and all the candidates on the plane did.

@Jenn S. Don’t know if you saw my comment under Ab Aeterno, it was posted quite late. The term “old world” was frequently used as late as 1970’s to refer to true chameleons, “old world chameleons” found mostly in Madagascar, Africa, and parts of Yemen, none in the Americas (though recently one species is thriving in Hawai, from escaped pets.)

The “disease” seems (perhaps) to be an amplification of ones basic state.
Sayid represses, compartmentalizes, remains calm in emotional situations. Thus he now shows severely blunted affect, no feelings.
Claire was agitated, thinking of things that could have happened to her baby (probably.) Thus she becomes paranoid, hypomanic, aggressive toward perceived threats to her child (like Taweret during the early stages of her mythology) mixed with periods of melancholy.

good thoughts as always… i had actually forgotten about Desmond’s hospital scene and had to go back and edit my blog entry…

one thought on something you said…
“why weren’t those same secrets shared with Ben when he rose to power?”

i have a theory about this and i think that Ben was never meant to be the leader of the island. I think Widmore and Eloise were co-leaders following Jacob via Richard, but somehow, they fell from grace – Widmore in his off-island affair and Eloise, perhaps, in murdering Faraday (I’d kick her out for that, Faraday was AWESOME). There also seemed to be some tension between Richard and the two leaders when Ben was brought to the Others to be healed. Richard said something like, “I don’t answer to them.”

And somehow, Ben was there to scoop up control and take power. But here’s the thing. I don’t think Ben ever, EVER dealt with Jacob. I think he’s always been interacting with MiB during his entire reign as leader of the others, thinking that he was Jacob and Jacob was the Devil. (Just as MiB tried to deceive Richard). Somehow Ben convinced Richard that he was supposed to be the new leader and, it would seem, that Richard convinced Jacob to allow it or Richard acted in his own will (FREE WILL) by choosing Ben. (Meanwhile, at some point, Jacob chose Dogun and posted him at the temple).

Anyway, this is based on Ben’s sudden rise to power, the odd balance of power between Richard and him, Ben telling Jacob that he never heard from him (“What about me?”), and Ben’s involvement with Smokey (eg. he was able to call on Smokey to enact revenge on Keamy.)

I don’t have twitter put I saw your posts on the side of the page and a couple weeks ago I said the same exact thing to my wife about cindy the flight attendant!! I’ve been seeing her all over the place on T.V. but only since the 6th season started. Glad I wasn’t the only one to notice

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